From surplus Butler Barracks to a school cafeteria

Next week's Out of the Museum question asks when parasols were popular in Lincoln The picture of a 1946 brown army surplus Butler Barrack, alongside a stamped piece of wood might have reminded former Lincoln Elementary (later Mary Beermann) School students of their cafeteria. However, the painted brown building might have been misleading as two of its sister buildings became the school cafeteria and had a gray metal exterior. The picture shown in last week's Out of the Museum, was a sister building to the former cafeteria building and continues to be used today for storage. After April 1972, the buildings were moved to Glen Edwards Elementary School and later temporarily moved to Lincoln High School. Long before federal hot lunch programs became a reality, Frank Farnsworth, the elementary school board chair, was upset to learn about children coming to school with only a raw potato for lunch. With the board's agreement in the late 1940s, he and his wife, Martha, mortgaged their home to buy two Butler Barracks. They were to be reimbursed when district funds became available because it was in between fiscal years and the new school budget had not been approved Farnsworth and Principal Karl Bayless drove to San Francisco to buy the buildings. Community members immediately worked to erect those buildings and launch a program that guaranteed a good, hot lunch for every Lincoln school child. The school board hired Mrs. Virginia Lucas (Dave Lucas' mother) to head the lunch program, sending her for training on how to cook for hundreds. She was used to cooking for a crowd for events at the Methodist church at Sixth and I Streets. One of Farnsworth's daughters enjoyed the beans that Mrs. Lucas made and the other's favorite was her tamale pie. All the students enjoyed her cinnamon rolls. When daughters, Shirley Russell and Susan Ohanian, worried about phone calls from State Department of Education officials threatening to put Farnsworth in jail for "persistently violating school building code," he told them that children were more important than bureaucrats. State officials insisted that the school board attach supporting metal arms on both sides of the building. These extensions were hazards that were often run into by students running and playing nearby. Community members said the building was safe, since Butler Barracks were used by the military in the Pacific during World War II. Lincoln schoolchildren ate in that non-code cafeteria from 1946 to April 1972. When Glen Edwards Elementary School was built in the mid 1950s, its students were bused to the Mary Beermann School cafeteria between E and F streets and Second and Third street until later expansion at Glen Edwards included a cafeteria. The prefab buildings were delivered to Farnsworth's yard on First Street. The pieces were packed in long wooden crates, each with a stenciled end board declaring the contents. The pictured board of one of those crates hung in his garage until daughter, Ohanian, later hung it at her home in Vermont. Wanting to document the history of the long-running cafeteria, Ohanian recently donated the board to the Lincoln Area Archives Museum. The Lincoln Area Archives Museum is open from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays at 640 5th St.